A Lawler unto himself (ESPN article)

by Dave Usher for ESPN

Last weekend saw former Liverpool full-back Chris Lawler celebrate his 70th birthday. Lawler served the club with great distinction throughout the 1960s and early 70s, playing well over 500 games for Bill Shankly's side and finding the net on an incredible 61 occasions, averaging a goal roughly every nine games. Remarkably, none of those 61 goals came from penalties or direct free-kicks.

People often talk about how the role of the modern day full-back has changed and Liverpool's present incumbents are a good example of that, as both Glen Johnson and Jose Enrique are more like wingers than defenders at times. The style of football demanded by Brendan Rodgers means there is little call for a traditional type of full-back in his team. They are expected to play high up the pitch and to provide attacking width.

Even when Liverpool play 4-3-3 Rodgers prefers his wingers 'inverted', cutting inside and clearing out space for the full-backs to exploit. Johnson in particular is ideally suited to this and is regarded as one of the top attacking full-backs in European football. Yet he's only found the net eight times in his Liverpool career to date and has just 14 goals in his entire career.

Lawler's 61 goals from open play represent an incredible haul and few full-backs in any era can match it. As a rule, modern day full-backs are unquestionably more attack minded than their predecessors, so surely it would stand to reason that they'd find the net more frequently. So why then, does it seem that goals from full-backs are becoming increasingly rare? Certainly from open play at least.

Ashley Cole is a great attacking full-back but rarely finds the net; I've already mentioned Johnson, and Kyle Walker comes into the same category. All are blessed with great pace, power and skill and are comfortable marauding forward, yet none of them regularly find themselves on the scoresheet.

So how did Lawler manage to be so prolific?

Read the full article here.